(NEW YORK) February 12, 2013- Milton Pedraza, founder and CEO of the Luxury Institute (www.luxuryinstitute.com), the leading global independent research and consulting firm in the luxury industry, has launched the Customer Culture Institute (www.customercultureinstitute.com). The objective Customer Culture Institute is focused on helping mainstream brands across all industries and geographies to rapidly design, deploy and reinforce customer-centric cultures that leverage their unique competitive positions.

“Customer acquisition, conversion, and retention rates for most brands are dismal,” says Pedraza, one of the world’s most respected and independent CRM experts since 1997. “Digital technology, social media, Big Data, and multi-channel access are getting all of the attention these days. However, the most important element in order for brands to outperform and, more importantly, outbehave their competition is a customer culture.

Pedraza has developed and licensed a proprietary Customer Culture process to the Luxury Institute and will do the same with the Customer Culture Institute. The newly formed institute will provide clients from diverse industries with Pedraza’s collaborative seven-step process that includes developing relationship-building techniques, education, incentives and measurement for customer facing employees and ultimately drives higher sales.

“A great deal of business today is purely transactional when it should be relationship-driven and more humanistic,” says Pedraza. “At the Luxury Institute, we have proven through engagements with world-class clients that customer data collection, conversion, retention, recovery and referrals go up dramatically as a customer culture takes hold.”

The Customer Culture Institute is presently adding staff and seeking more like-minded and passionate individuals specialized in particular industries to represent the institute in the U.S. and in key overseas markets. For information, please visit www.customercultureinstitute.com to fill out a contact form.